Friday, July 29, 2005

Raymond James endorsing Operation Alberta Freedom.

CALGARY, July 28 /CNW/ - Investment Dealer Raymond James Ltd. today released an in-depth research report that emphatically declares that after almost a century of development, the time for Canada's Oil Sands has finally come.

"We continue to believe that those companies with leverage to the Oil Sands of Canada offer excellent long-term investment opportunities," says John Mawdsley, Senior Vice President and Energy Research Analyst at Raymond James. "Even with the significant share price appreciation of these energy-related stocks over the past year, the stars are aligning for companies involved in the Oil Sands."

According to the report, some of the circumstances that positively impact the Oil Sands of Canada include the following:

- With the Oil Sands of Canada holding 175 billion barrels of proven recoverable reserves (second in size only to Saudi Arabia's 262 billion barrels), Canada is one of the few non-OPEC countries that can increase oil production.

- Production from the Oil Sands is expected to exceed all OPEC producers, except for Saudi Arabia, by mid-next decade. This will make the Oil Sands the third largest oil producer in the world, after only Saudi Arabia and Russia.

- The "low-hanging fruit" of global oil reserves have been picked. To find new, substantial reserves, producers often have to deal with extreme conditions, like drilling in ultra-deep water, the severe High Arctic, or in politically unstable areas.

- The number of giant oil field discoveries has been very limited over the last 10 years, and the likelihood of finding more of these fields drops with each passing day.

- At 83 million barrels a day, the world consumes one billion barrels of oil every 12 days; there certainly is not a discovery of a one billion barrel pool every 12 days.

- Canada's political stability creates a more positive climate for investors and oil producers when compared to other countries where other significant oil reserves are found including Russia, Venezuela, the west coast of Africa and the Middle East.

The report also underscores the importance of the massive Oil Sands reserves to the North American economy. "At current rates of consumption of approximately 20 million barrels a day in the United States, the 175 billion barrels of proven reserves in the oil sands could supply all of the U.S. oil requirements for the next 25 years," says Mawdsley. "If we include the additional 130 billion barrels of potential reserves, Canada could supply all U.S. oil requirements for the next 40 years."

The economic implications are immensely positive for companies involved in the dramatic growth of the Oil Sands at a time when global oil production is close to reaching a peak, says Mawdsley.

"We believe that world oil production will peak in the next five to ten years," he says. "Many of the world's oil producing nations have already reached their production peaks and many more nations will be added to this list. We believe that this bodes extremely well for investment in the Oil Sands where production can grow dramatically over the next decade and longer."